Moving to India with an Autistic Child After 14 Years in the US

4:03 Just finding Health Care in the US was very tough especially it was covid as well and that's when we just flew to India for like a small like a you know break from office and I was very surprised how we could e how we could like quickly get health care how could we could afford it the frequency of the Care everything worked really in our favor and our son was already like improving and then after some time we took more time off from work and you know we got really good care for nine months in India and then we moved back to the US and in the US it was just like lack of resources was really evident like in healthcare like the lack of doctors availability availability of therapists like they would only do once a week or once two weeks so which was not

5:05 Enough and plus the growing homelessness and the gun violence these things were starting to like you know become this big beast and that's when we decided that okay you know we decided a month that when we are going to exit the US and and yeah just when we were leaving I got an offer to work in Tokyo and so I was very excited always like you know visited here and was excited about how it would be like to live here and work here so yeah we were not really sure with Healthcare and you know with the language how it's going to pan out but I think at the end of two years in Tokyo it's really good and it was a good decision and we are already glad that we are so close like to India like almost half halfway between us and India and I think eventually we do want to get

6:05 Back to India U it's still on the cards so yeah that's just a summary no

6:12 Thanks a lot for such a nice overview I know I think you kind of covered most of the like the journey maybe if you are okay like I mean I wanted to get a little bit more details of specific information sounds like I think you moved around in us so is there any place that you like most just curious like a fun because I think you said you've been in Midwest Seattle Bera Texas so yeah any any place that you like the most yeah my favorite question so I love love love Seattle cuz love the mountains love nature and everything was great until we had a baby because yes it does rain and more than the rain it's the cloudiness that you know you know makes you sad and when you are like 30 plus the Bones start aching because of vitamin D lack lacking of vitamin D so after a kid we realize like you know the parks are always wet and it's so cold so wet

7:15 And cold so it was not ideal after that and also in Seattle there was just too much homelessness near in all the parks the kid Parks they had tents syringes in the park so made it very unsafe you know even like and this was like near the campus of udab the University of Washington so it's a very good neighborhood but it's so unsafe so Seattle is great and then because it's also close to Canada and yeah very pretty yeah other fun city that I would recommend is also Austin Texas because the drinks are awesome the food is awesome and because of so much like Spanish Mexican Spanish influence you also work with lot of Spanish people in offices and their

8:15 Hospitality and the you know just niceness really rubs on you and there is like music everywhere in Austin yeah because there is the Austin city limit Music Festival South by Southwest so a lot of artist coming in and out so the vibe is just great and I used to live close to the UT Austin campus yeah and and you know like you know when I was working there for Intel I could also like take classes in UT Austin so it was just a very nice small little city in Texas I'm sure I think things

8:51 Might have changed now but before it used to be a college town right with the UT Austin for sure yeah thanks for sharing that so sounds like I think you know you have started feeling a little bit bored and lonely maybe later so you you didn't have the idea of you know moving to a different country from us from early on maybe later in the life that's when you felt like to explore and I think maybe with your kid situation I think it just accelerated is that right or yeah yeah you know so in the US also like I did travel quite a l lot alone like I try I travel to like Central America a lot like Costa Rica I went like thce I also traveled to South America like Colombia and Peru and like I would always imagine how it would be like to live in those places you know if I had to spend day to day

9:51 Like you know I was noticing the you know how people live their lives there and also went to Mexico few times so I have been traveling and then you know trying to make a list of places where I think you know I would like to live down the line yeah so and after having our kid also we told ourselves like me and my husband that you know it'll be nice to redo these things like go to that same ski ski Resort or you know do the same things but with him this will be his first time but when we actually started doing that with our kid I I realized that no you know I was still feeling jaded you know I could not bring the organic excitedness that I thought it would be so that's when I thought that maybe yeah maybe we really done here and we have like such a long life ahead of us let's let's let's do something new a new place yeah no thanks for sharing that

10:54 If you are okay I mean if you can share a little bit more specifics if it's okay because there are some families who might have like a child that require some you know some additional health support or whatnot so maybe if you can start like you know your experience in us maybe again it might be due to covid or it could be for different reasons and then like your experience in India so this could help for families who might be in a similar situation you know when they were looking at evaluating the health system at both us and India if you can share some details specifically your experience before deciding to give it a try in India and then I think you mentioned that you went back to us again and then you have experienced something so if you can like you know compare and contrast or share your insights on that that would be very helpful sure yeah so with healthc care like you know before our kid we really did not use so much of the health care there we were provided a healthare from our

11:55 Companies and we used to do our regular like you know yearly checkups and dental cleaning and stuff like that which was all okay but then with our son we realized that once you know he was in a daycare and the teacher kind of mentioned that hey you should get this autism assessment done and then that's when we started playing with this Health Care system and quickly we realized that in in the US you know especially in Seattle it was very challenging because there are like you cannot get an assessment for a two and a half year old because you know like it's state provided and then there's a you know this and during covid for one year nobody was assessing they cannot come and assess and they also say that if you assess there's a label that gets tacked to the kid it follows them to the school then there is also something called

12:55 Integrated you know schooling where once the state official assess assesses you they are going to reserve a space for the kid in a school and all this was like very hard in the back end MH and they all were like one year long processes and because they really have to determine if you really need this special Kota or not so it was tough and and then that's when we went to India cuz my in-laws their doctor and you know we were able to like quickly see like a good pediatrition in in in Delhi and we went to this hospital called gangaram and quickly he got evaluated you know for like the the different categories of autism and then they quickly suggested that yeah you can start here with the therapy you can do Monday to Saturday for 2 hours so

13:59 So it was so amazing like you know having that that support system like so like for the next almost like a month we did that like Monday to Saturday we didn't even go outside Delhi we were just doing therapy and we also learned how to do it at home because we knew that after we come back to the us we have to do it at home and even you know the doctor said that yeah you cannot send him to a daycare for so long you have to spend a lot more time with him so it was very good but when we went back to the US that's when the struggle started because with our like very demanding jobs in in Facebook it was just so hard to to kind of do these kind of therapies at home and you know and also not ignore him but like you have to ignore him when you're working it was so hard and and

14:59 Then we also looked at different list for8 nine months wow and if you something that kind of starts solidifying after three so it's just harder so we had this thing so we like think that really caus that burnout like doing your household work then doing the special thing then you know doing like your 8 10 hours at work it was U really crazy and you know and that's when we decided to leave and then we decided Bangalore was like yeah like Silicon Valley of India more options and

15:59 Stuff so so so yeah Healthcare wise yeah and when so in fact when we went back to us we found it difficult and we had to come back to India again because that's when I took like a six Monon medical leave Family Medical Leaf which is a great feature from the US at least for the new companies so yeah kudos to that at least that I was able to like you know retain my pay my position and like also be absent and yeah those 6 months like me and my husband just like you know just the therapy therapy therapy and yeah those six seven six seven months really made a change that's great and coming back to Seattle then then we did some speech therapy the quality of speech therapy was very very good in Seattle however the frequency of the that and was was kind of challenging was not enough I I wish they have more

17:01 Resources human resources to have these therapies you know provided to everyone who needs okay no thanks for

17:10 Sharing that so sounds like I think maybe after your you know visit back to us that's when I think your plan to move has been solidified because of the burnout because of lot of things and all that stuff so if you can share like from a logistics wise like you know from a career plan from like the time to move to a different country like can you talk a little bit about that like is it like being 6 months or 9 months in plan or is it just like you know you made a decision and then started looking into some of the next steps so I think that would be very helpful yeah so we we actually started planning about it in 20 21 December and and then I remember that I was also like interviewing for my my Tokyo job over Christmas and then I got the offer in Jan and then

18:11 We kind of planned that our exit date would be like March April so kind of time bounded it and then after that we kind of you know like like made the like backend schedule where you know we started looking into things like moving company arranging that figuring out the estimate for that we also had to the main thing was selling our house in Seattle so you know selling our house getting it ready for so everything are like categories the first thing is your house second is like planning to you know move your money to India and then you know third I would say yeah like the shipping company and then once you have that figured out also where where will you ship your stuff to in India you know so those kind of things and then we have a cat we we still have him he's not in Tokyo

19:12 Right now but you know he's been with us in us for almost like 10 12 years so we had to also ship him to India yeah so so then you know figuring out like you know what is the process for India India's for India to import him vaccinations all the certificate and then we were this was just after covid when I think United was the only airlines that was flying from from SFO to India that time so and then we were also thinking lansa but lansa last moment said no pets allowed during Co so United was our only thing only method and you know we were also thinking like do we ship him in in a ship or something or like it was so like you know it was not clear how do we do with a pet so if you have a pet that's another thing and one thing we didn't have to look

20:15 Into was like schooling schooling of the kid in India so and you know once we reached India we realized that oh my God summer vacations are on so you have to take care of the kid I was like oh man yeah so so yeah I would say like you know start you have to start planning on these lines you know and then each of these categories is like another Deep dive yes so like for the house also like you know like we did estate sales so you know like I you know we literally did cutouts and we Pro promoted everywhere taking pictures then selling our car one by one but keeping one car for like the you know last few days yeah so yeah they all were so it was a very a busy time yeah I can imagine yeah but it took us about three months I would say to execute everything

21:15 And the more time you have it's better yeah yeah and then yeah and I think one of my biggest challenges was also like transferring you know the money movement so I had so so yeah we can get to that later but yeah these are the main main topics so

21:38 Maybe before maybe I'm just curious I know maybe after your experience with your kid in terms of the health system you made a decision to move out of us but curious like why not India like maybe again you know these big corporations has the offices in Bangalore or some other places just curious like why how you ended up in Tokyo versus India like you know the applying the jobs if if you're okay to share I'm just curious again I think if you have the plan to move and then I don't know if there is any change or something came up and you just took the opportunity just curious on that yeah no problem so yeah like I was looking into some opportunities in India but I don't know I had a very I was also thinking that in India it would be good to work for you know myself cuz you know finally I'm in my home country I can work on any in any industry in any product role you know so

22:40 I wanted to like like not suddenly get tied up with a corporate giant you know into the you the typical roles so I'm a TPM a pro technical program manager so it's a very coordination heavy stakeholder management heavy a lot of meeting heavy role so I just didn't wanted to like you know jump into that in India so so that was my secret thing that I want to just like you know work for myself and then the Tokyo thing just like it was just miraculous like somebody I got the job through Linkedin and for a long time I almost thought that somebody's going to scam me you know and then but I so I was like okay just let me go through it you know I have I don't know Japanese language and it's a far shot you know but then when it worked out I was just like you know pretty happy and we were very concerned about our son's thing though like now moving into a Japanese language

23:43 Thing it's also not as social as India is so you know so I was like okay he won't get that environment that we were envisioning that he would get in India so is it making sense and then you know in Japan also they don't get they don't give too much attention to like you know special needs like these kind of things are just like you know shoved under the rug so we were like H how do we you know how it's going to be but I was like you know let like this is one like you know my as aspiration you know to live and work here so let's give it a try and yeah and that's when like we we left Seattle and we moved to India for 2 months while I was waiting for my Japanese visa to come and so yeah we went and like kind of did a little proof of concept of living in Bangalore for two months and then

24:43 Yeah then we then we headed to Tokyo okay great so I know I think one of the key reason is maybe the support system for your son as well as I think the other things like the burnout that you had so you were looking for something U just curious like how how is it going in Japan you know from that perspective yeah yeah so Japan can be tricky so like for me I'm in a good spot because I'm still working for a company that's which is which has an American management so that's why the work work life balance is still maintained and here you know I I don't own a car so there's no hassle of driving and all that and the trains here are amazing like like every 3 minutes that commuter trains so me and my son we are like taking the train everywhere so because of this good accessibility we are you know saving

25:43 Time and surprisingly we have also made a lot of friends in from the school and like lot of experts here there are a lot of experts here and they really are friendly and they want to make friends like compared to the US where I felt that if you don't have a lot of things in common it was very hard to make friends and everybody was so busy in their drop drop drop off and pickups and hardly there was time but here but here people are like you know they want to have play dates meet so I love that in Japan I also like that once the Japanese people come MIT to meeting you over the weekend they always show up and I remember like in Seattle you know I was also one of them who would be like last moment saying that oh hey man like let's take a rain check so so I was like know like and then that pushed me here that I'm like

26:44 You know what if they are showing up I better show up every time you know and I let me not lie and say I'm going to come and then I don't come so you know so in that way the social scene is nice and I do agree that here like even in Tokyo people don't speak English that much and so you know it's hard to have a conversation with a with a Japanese person Beyond a certain level so you might feel that oh I cannot talk about politics or some other like you know topic that I want to Deep dive but I would stay still still it's a nice camaraderie and like it's warm and yeah the it's not as warm and hospitable as maybe a Philippines or India but definitely warmer than Western countries and so so yeah and my son has learned how to be patient in the trains he has learned like all the

27:46 Station names so he really enjoys taking the train and yeah in that way I feel like we have saved a lot of time and and there a lot of extracurricular for kids and for the weekends so there are a lot of ways to spend time however the schooling system in Japan is a bit flawed and it's very selective like if you're very rich then only you can afford the international schools but but if you don't want to Shell out like 10 grand an year then your other option are the Japanese schools where you learn everything in Japanese and and the only sub English is a subject you know but the that's also not like pure English it's almost like a Japanese way of saying English so I think unless you're planning to live here longterm you know it's not it's not efficient if you are

28:47 Just in that system okay so so yeah schooling I think is our main motivation why we want to like exit Japan and and and IND would be our next Landing place okay no thanks for sharing that maybe just going back to like some of the topics that you covered maybe if we can go to that I think if I understand I think you mentioned you selected Bangalore as your U spot for like your soft Landing I'm guessing you know still like close by to the family to visit them but it's more to do with you know the opportunities and like where what would be a good place to settle in India yeah yeah also like climate wise is it's cooler than a lot of other places so we really like that and it's it being the Silicon Valley really also is the land of opportunities for us so yeah yeah that was the main reason the other

29:44 Category that I think you kind of touched about is like you know some of the financial side if there's anything that you wanted to share or anything I think you know especially like you mentioned about the money movement or some other things right there are any things that you you know wanted to communicate from your perspective that would be helpful yeah I would love to hear some insights on that side yeah sure so yeah banking has been challenging so but thanks to my dad like he helped he he asked me to open you know like a like in one of my previous trips to India like he really forced me to open an account and you know have it like with ICICI and I was like I was not in a mood of doing those things but thankfully he made me do it because that was one problem that when we started to when we decided to leave the US it was very difficult to open any account remotely and

30:48 I would say ICI had a very good overseas support so they cered me all the docks to through Seattle you know and they opened it CU banking in India is also linked to you having a phone Indian phone where they can send otps and stuff and if you are not prepared with all these things it's very hard last moment to do set up these things so I would say anybody who is thinking about moving to really like set up with your bank and then also start doing lot of like trial wire transfers and making sure you know that your pipeline is set up to transmit the money because you know since I only was doing the last two months of my move and even like the initial wire transfers really fail because the system doesn't trust you and so there are a lot of these systematic dependencies so yeah that

31:48 Would be my advice just to start early yeah and I also learned about this awesome option called fcnr so basically like you can transmit all your USD savings as USD into an Indian Bank so what it helps is like the money is still geographically closer to you but you've also have locked in the USD you know to a USD format so so whenever you want to you know make it make it liquid at your end you can get the the rate that that would be current that time yeah so so that would make a lot of saving so yeah so like you know research all these things and like you know try to set it up and then I also learned that there is a time period until which you can keep it as fcnr so so yeah you need to also make it look liquid after you lose your I think NRI status so start looking into those

32:49 Things yeah I mean I think you said an

32:51 Important Point like everything in the Indian banking system is associated with your phone number the OTP small transaction they ask for the OTP and like the UPI payments everything is associated with it I think you bring up a good point about setting up the plumbing ready for the transfers and also the system to trust because you know when they see these big transfers they might like you know red flag it because this is not usual and whatnot so thanks for sharing that is there any topic that we haven't covered that you would like to cover that would beneficial for the audience yeah maybe like I don't know but I I have in touched about 401ks and stuff like that I haven't actually like converted or transferred like I haven't like yeah like withdrawn my done the early withdrawal yet so I don't know what it entails so those are still tied I

33:53 Would another thing I found valuable was a lot of my like systems in India were connected to my Us phone number so I still kept my AT&T number alive even until now you know because even I get some otps on my Us number so like even lot of the 401K Fidelity accounts are related so I would say keep that in mind as well and yeah and and like right now I am also applying for my son's schools in India and that's another Beast that I have you know I have noted like I love India G like awesome people great food you know like you know improve my son's Health super happy but schooling schooling is another Beast because now like compared to when I was I was in school now International schooling that the tag is everywhere every school is international and what I have noticed at least in Bangalore is like a lot of the

34:55 Management companies that you know that does the pr for the school they call it International they they specify that they are very inclusive they have therapies for you know differently abled kids and that they are not purely academic but unfortunately when they do these interactions and interviews with kids they never talk about you know hobbies and or or them they straight away just go to the academic portion of the test and the expectations from from even an ukg applicant is tremendous compared to the kids who are like same age kids who are going to schools in Japan international schools in Japan and also kids who are going to a US school so like we you know ideally yeah the kids should learn those things in school but the expectation in India because of the competition as well is

35:57 That that no you should know everything but when you're entering you're just going to hone it or something so and this kind of a pressure early on creates like a like you know a butterfly butterfly effect on all the parents the systems and everybody you know all the time is talking about you know studies and like and I'm like oh my God five years ago this kid was not even born so so I just feel like there and yeah so between the management of the school and the teacher who does the testing there is a disconnect because at least when for parents who are applying online from the outside who doesn't have that opportunity to always be on ground you know getting the white check of the school they're doing it on so it's hard to know what's the reality and what's being shown online so I think that is another factor that I have now learned that one should also weed out so yeah definitely be there in person to kind

37:00 Of know you know how the people are of that school what are their hidden intentions and real intentions and then yeah so just curious like how are you

37:10 Filtering out like you know the schools and see which one is the right school for your kid is it just talking to the people just curious as you said many schools and everybody says the right things but in practice it could be a little bit different so just wondering how you're approaching te Ing and selecting a school for your son yeah you know like the first thing we did was like based on where we are living we started only targeting schools to that like you know nearby and then from then just apply to everything and then you know then it started with the interactions when we failed that first interaction and we learned what they are expecting so we started to prepare for the second one but again with kids you cannot teach them these things overnight like they cannot learn to Z phonics in in overnight or over a week you know so you just do your best at home and then you know so you learn with every interview and then you know the basis

38:11 Of rejection you use that basis to question the next school that hey how much you know what's the student teacher ratio how much is academics you know you know and then like then you can get understand you know with what the teachers are saying and asking you know what is that intensity yeah so and so that is one but I would say at least for India it's best that you are there in person to to kind of wcky and Survey the place the school that is you must do that as well so yeah okay makes sense yeah yeah and also another thing I learned about like Google reviews for like all these schools lot of schools I think most of them like either like buy reviews and the pr so you cannot trust reviews CU some people are just like just say random things and then some are really nicely worded because they're paid by

39:12 The school so it's like you know you just cannot tell what's the real thing from reviewss okay no thanks for sharing

39:21 That there is one point that I want to go back I think you mentioned about like maintaining the AT&T numbers to still get your otps and so on just want to let the audience know I know there are options called like a Google Voice you know that works with most of the financial institution so we can provide the list of the financial where you still can get the otps and that's a onetime Port Port fee that you pay but it's completely free and there are other options so just wanted to make a note about that for the point that you mentioned earlier Ana regarding you know maintaining the number so that you still have access to these you know otps for you know accessing your financial institution and so on thank

40:03 You cool any other any advice for the future aspirants from your perspective from your journey from you're living in Japan us and in India anything that you can advise the future aspirants I would say like you know when you're planning to like leave I would say definitely spend some time in India before you leave and try when you're are there try to see from the perspective of a person living there in and out accessing the different systems in the society whether it's schooling healthare banking ordering food or rides and you know and get an feeling of how it could be like so and then from there and the next thing also would be like just make get your reasons in order

41:03 Like why you want to move like for us it was really the health care you know and delegation of chores so that we can you know spend more time with our kid or work or something like that so figuring figure out what those reasons are because once you move there will be lot of situations where you will like you know question the move and be annoyed at the system but that time you really have to you know revisit your priorities and remind your yourself so so yeah and nothing is forever even if you move to India and you don't like you know you can again move out so you know keep trying and yeah and just like me I was a bit hesitant to move directly to India so I was like oh Tokyo sounds great it's like a mix of East and West so I am close to home halfway home so you know and lot of so so you can

42:04 Also do that find another Middle Ground just as a stop gap before you make that final move and yeah and to be honest when I was moving to Japan I missed a lot of things in the US but you know but I learned that even those things are missing in Japan so when I move to India I'm sure those things will be all Al absent so I wouldn't be like you know grudging against India and I'll be like more like okay you know even in Japan they don't have it so it's okay so you know like won be like totally like a hater so so have a have more perspective yeah so that's all no yeah I completely

42:47 Echo with you if somebody has the thought of moving back and if they have the flexibility it's always a good idea to stay in India as a resident not as a visitor for you know couple of months to really experience like how it would be like as a resident of India like utilizing the systems and using the systems you can get a good feel for it before the Big Move so with that thank you very much Ana for taking the time and sharing your journey with us really helpful and and thank you very much for being open and able to talk to some of the details regarding the healthare your son situation you know I'm sure that would be very helpful for some families who might be in a similar boat I know how when they were thinking about it so really appreciate you taking the time and talking to us thanks a lot no problem aanes keep up the good work it was a pleasure yeah thanks thank you all for joining us on this insightful journey of Dy return if

43:48 You enjoyed this episode and want to explore more stories and expert advice make sure to subscribe and hit the notification Bell don't don't forget to leave a comment below with your thoughts and experiences by the way check out the links in the description below for our Facebook group and social media for updates and engaging discussions as well as connecting with fellow the wrers thank you once again and until next time may your D journey be filled with joy growth and endless possibilities